Hotels and updates

**Hotel updates ...** Well what can I say apart from they have so far been a mixed bag!

**First of all the wonderful Hotel Fifu** As per my previous blog Hotel Fifu was a lovely place to stay and I would recommend it to anyone. The hospitality, cleanliness and roof terrace made it a pleasure to stay there and we were reluctant to leave. Mr Fifu would check on us every time he saw us having breakfast or dinner and couldn’t do enough to help he even offered to sort out a replacement Tuk Tuk for Rich and Chrissie when their first one blew up in flames (this was before we had started the race and it wasn’t really their fault but the man welding too close to the fuel tank! But that is a story for them to tell not me)

Luxury Level 8/10 Cleanliness Level 9/10 Friendliness Level 10/10 Value for Money 9/10 Bonus - Roof Terrace with View / Very kind and friendly approach / View

**Night 1** - The first hotel since the off was Fort Pokeran This promised by the travel guide to be a good choice, in all honesty it was only 1 of 2 hotels in the area so maybe we shouldn’t have expected too much! On arrival in the dark it seemed quite imposing if not a little early, Chrissie and I were at first taken to our respective rooms and provided with twin beds, oh well it was late it was better than no beds but we had booked double rooms two nights before, we were keen! Whilst trying to get in the rooms and not just stand outside holding heavy bags one man shouted from the other side of the courtyard to the gentleman showing us the rooms “no no the Royal Suites!†Oo we thought, we get to Chrissie’s room first which was pretty cool, she thinks ‘Yes got a good one here’ I then get taken to ours which turns out to be even bigger, a hall, bathroom, bedroom, outside courtyard and a day room! When going to the toilet in the dark in the night though it is a bit drafty! The wow and excitement of staying in a fort stops here! We go to dinner, this was bad and I suspect the reason for my Delhi belly a day later which has resulted in me loosing half a stone so far! No sooner are our spoons put down (they don’t appear to have forks here all that often!) then we are presented with a pink slip asking for the money for our room and dinner by a rather rude man with an upside down hockey stick used as a walking aid! It all appears to be done very quietly but with extreme persistence he won’t leave until we pay, no polite English view of “I will come back in a moment†just a long stare with the occasional comment of “you are getting a special price don’t tell other Tuk Tuk teams†This later translates to you booked in advance so are paying the listed price from the book everyone else I can con into paying more! So once we have paid many teams head off to bed, this prompts the staff to clear all the tables of cloths and so on with extreme speed all around us they decide to look at us until we leave into the darkness of the fort as lights are now out and we must head to bed as the staff clearly don’t work once it is dark! I have to say I haven’t wanted to not stay at a hotel again quite as much as the Fort, the friendly Indian hospitality that we experience at Hotel Fifu just didn’t happen here, it was appalling. I have even decided once I get home I shall be adding a sternly worded comment to Trip advisor suggesting that you don’t stay there as I was that annoyed!

Luxury Level – 7/10 Cleanliness Level – 5/10 Friendless Level – minus 10/10 Value for Money – 1/10 Negative Points – Run by Dr Evil / Fleecing Attitude / Delhi Belly / Noisy Water Pump (Rich & Chrissies Room) / extortionately priced bad food

**Night 2 Pali** – RTDC (I can’t quite remember the name!) We find ourselves in a dark side ally with What Ho of course, Ratnangadam, and It Tuk Tuks two to Tango looking up at a hotel that allegedly takes guests! It is dark, we are not convinced it is even open and there is no where to put our Tuk Tuks. We of course attract attention and two lovely young chaps appear to offer help in finding us a hotel, we follow one on his bike whilst the other one rides in the Tuk Tuk next to me asking me all about I-phones and how much they cost in England, he then tries to befriend me on Facebook! We successfully arrive at the hotel and we find 5 or 6 other teams also staying here, though they all arrived much earlier! The hotel isn’t anything special it has a bed with a bathroom and a flushing toilet which is greatly required as I start to feel ill! The big down side is the bed is like wood and the bathroom has bugs crawling all over it! The plus side is the price. We left at 7 ish the next morning.

Luxury Level – 5/10 Cleanliness Level – 4/10 Friendliness Level – 5/10 Value for Money – 8/10 Bonus Point – Fixed price written on the wall but bugs in bathroom

**Night 3 - Trident Hotel Udaipur** A very lovely 5 star hotel and it is only night 3! This hotel is lovely if not a little overpowering on the help we can’t carry a single bag. The beds are wonderful though, the fluffy pillows and duvet are amazing and the soft mattress is great. We have a great night’s sleep and even manage a bit of a lie in! In the morning the boys head into town to fix the Tuk Tuks whilst we girls stay in the hotel, we have lunch and sit by the pool whilst we wait, it is a hard life this adventuring!

Luxury Level 10/10 Cleanliness Level – 10/10 Friendliness Level – 8/10 Value for Money – 7/10 Bonus Points – Swimming Pool / Gardens / Soft fluff beds and pillows / soft towels / soft loo roll

**Night 4 - Hotel Atithi Palace** just off a motorway As the Tuk Tuk’s were being repaired in the morning we didn’t drive too far today but we did stumble across a lovely little 3 star hotel next to the road that was frequented by Police Inspectors! Rich befriended them and they told the hotel that they must treat us right and look after us. There is also a bar with every spirit you could ever want, great when you are next to the highway I feel! The bed was soft the bathroom was basic and missing a bit of glass in the window but again it was cheap so you can’t expect a lot. The food though was lovely.

Luxury Level – 5/10 Cleanliness Level – 4/10 Friendliness Level – 7/10 – Police Inspectors were there! Value for Money – 8/10 Bonus Points – No effort to find / easy access to the highway / Police Guard

**Night 5 - Hospital!** We decided that as it was Chrissie’s birthday we would try to find a lovely hotel to stay in unfortunately though an accident occurred and Rich and Chrissie had to head to hospital for stitches. This is another story for them to tell though they are safe and now in a 5 star hotel but we all thought it would be unfair to miss out a review!

Luxury Level – 2/10 Cleanliness Level – 8/10 Friendliness Level – 9/10 Value for Money – minus 10 / 10 Negatives – Chrissie had to be injured to gain access / Journalists wanting pictures and interviews / enforced naked sponge baths whilst sat on a toilet! (For Chrissie only obviously!)

**Night 5 & 6 Surya Palace** - Vadadora This is where we have stayed whilst Chrissie is fixed, Si and I have stayed here for 2 nights and are heading out at sunrise in the morning, they will be staying here for a while until she is fit to travel. The hotel is very comfortable and the staff have been very helpful, room service is great and a good price.

Luxury Level – 9/10 Cleanliness Level – 9/10 Friendliness Level – 9/10 Value for Money – 9/10 Positives – Manager helpful / Free Upgrades / Cake Stall Negatives – Excessive Tipping

Potholes, Gaffa and Cable Ties

Quick blog to update on the last few days .... it has been a few since we last had web access....

Sarah will be blogging her reviews of hotels ;) - suffice to say it has been a mixed bag.

In terms of the journey - following a News Year Eve party complete with Indian royalty, the race started in the sun and hangovers of New Years Day - exhilirating to finally get underway - and yes, we found a replacement tuktuk for the torched What Ho '1'.

Whilst many teams headed south to risk the direct desert route, we opted to head southeast along the roads to Jodhpur - having come that route to the start point, we knew that the roads were relatively smooth and even had the benefit of tarmac :) From there we planned to turn south and head down some of the larger roads towards Mount Abu, Udaipur and then towards Mumbai.

The roads themselves, even if they are large, have a number of regular features to the unwary driver - potholes, cattle, lorries, unmarked speed bumps, ditches and I think worth mentioning again, lorries. We had one very near miss today - Rich and Chrissie were very pale when they witnessed how close a coach came to close contact with Sarah and I in Tally Ho. The last couple of days our journey times have been about 11 hours each day - heading out at 7am to catch first light and the quieter roads.

At the time of writing this it is the end of day three of driving - we are in Udaipur - having already learnt a lot of lessons enroute. I always knew that cable ties and gaffa could be useful.....but I am now a raving fan boy for them - Tally Ho is quickly becoming held together by them...and yes, it is only day three of the race! We have experienced a variety of problems - What Ho only made it about 10km before suffering a puncture - Tally Ho has suffered repeated problems with the spark plugs and cabling.

Problems with the tuktuks have been such a hindrance that we are already considering sacrificing half a day of travel time to get them in to a garage and thus serviced....we figure it will save time in the long term. I am however, not going to let Rich commission any welding work.....given the fate of the previous tuktuk!

Day 2 - The Journey with Dave ...

So we did at last make it to our lovely hotel in Jaisalmer, Hotel Fifu however the journey on the way was eventful!

A few hours after Si decided to stop writing we arrived in Bikarna and experienced our first Indian hotel which on booking was described to us as middle (ish) accommodation! Not five star but OK, well either our view of OK is different or theirs is! It was ‘OK’, there were no bugs, the toilet flushed, the bed was hard **but** the door wouldn’t lock so we had to barricade it with luggage, dogs howled all night and it was freezing! Suffice to say I wouldn’t stay there again and Mum will only read about this after the event so it is alright we survived J

Chrissie and I will from now on provide each place we stay at a score:

Palace View Bikarna (there was no view of the palace by the way!)

Luxury Level 3/10

Cleanliness Level 5/10

Scariness Level 8/10!!

Friendliness 0/10 (We did arrive at 1am though so only an asleep doorman to greet us)

Bonus Points 0

We had said to Dave we would be very grateful if he could collect us at 10am for the remainder of the drive to Jaisalmer, in the middle of the night when I was pretty cold and couldn’t sleep I wondered why we wanted a lay in so badly! He was waiting for us dutifully in the morning which we were all very happy about. We then continued with the next six hour drive mostly sleeping on the way, I happened to wake up just as the Fort came into view on the horizon so I of course woke everyone else up so they could share the experience! Dave managed a smile.

So he delivered us quite literally outside our door making many people move out the way! We asked our saviour for a picture which he did reluctantly! We were greeted by a very friendly man nicknamed Mr Fifu, he has proved to be a lovely man who has even got us a deal on our next hotel which we have very keenly organised. We have been upgraded to a suite which is good so we now have a lounge to go along with our bedroom and shower room which is always welcome I feel J Si is happy he has found a channel on the TV that constantly shows the Premier League and we have experience our first night out in Jaisalmer which was great fun.

We have just returned from meeting some of the other Tuk Tuk teams which is suddenly making it so much more real, the only down point right now is the slight issue that our Tuk Tuk is in the garage, now this could either be a plus point as everything will be fixed in advance or a really bad sign as it is going to break down all the time! Either way we have yet to meet our beastie however many teams appear to have seen it so it does exist !

The next couple of days now involve learning how to drive our steed the ‘Tuk Tuk’ and sightseeing in theory nothing too crazy to report surely or will there be? .....

 Love Sarah x 

Arrival, the power of the wallet and the chaos of the roads

 Effectively ‘day one’ of our trip – we thought it would be one of the more sorted days – get on a flight, get on a train, arrive at first hotel...job done. But such is India and the nature of our trip that I suspect every day will be a challenge.

 The flight with Jet Airways was uneventful – we did hear that some flights in to India were being delayed or cancelled due to extreme fog, but our flight was thankfully relatively on time. A shade under 8 hours, the journey time passed swiftly; punctuated by movies and the now statutory games of Bejewelled.

Delhi airport was hectic. Massive queues and much shuffling in mobs meant that it took us over an hour to get past passport control. The man in the booth seemed bemused that Chrissie and Rich were a married couple but let Chrissie in anyway.

Relieved to finally be in India but apprehensive of the chaos of Delhi, we were keen to get across to the railway station so as to get our connecting 18 hour train journey to the start point of the race, Jaisalmer. Rich headed off to manfully negotiate a price for a taxi; I headed to Costa Coffee (are they really everywhere?) to get fleeced for four cans of Pepsi. Costa did me for 200 rupees (about £3) – not bad you may say...but not so when compared to the cost of the taxi - £6 for a forty minute journey. Do Costa maintain the same prices regardless of location or has Rich simply found a new talent for bartering?

The taxi ride was eventful in that it revealed to us the chaotic melee that is the Indian road system and especially that of Delhi.  Traffic seems to be not dictated by side of road, road markings nor any form of ‘highway code’ (remind me why I bothered to get an English licence...?). The law of the road seems to be dictated by a strict pecking order according to holiness, size of vehicle, crushability and fearlessness. Being sacred and thus untouchable, Cows are the top dogs. Lorries come next – slow and ponderous they only alter course for the aforementioned cows. Everything else tries to overtake the lorries by trying to dodge between them. No signalling or observational skills are used (see my previous thought on the value of my licence); the preferred option adopted by all bar the cows is the use of the horn. Whilst in the UK we may use the horn to loudly pronounce our indignation of another driver’s talentless driving, in India it has a variety of uses none of which include road rage. As to whether any driver in India pays any attention to the persistent blaring is questionable as its consistency makes it a background noise.

We knew that driving tuktuks across India would be tricky, but after seeing the seething traffic of Delhi we have all already resolved to avoid city centres if at all possible.

 So it was that we were deposited at New Delhi train station. Chrissie was adamant that we had come to the wrong station – in that we needed the ‘old’ station – and she was shortly proved to be correct. Regardless of the incorrectness of the station, an alarming but persistent rumour was told to us - that most of the trains were being cancelled and delayed – this included our one which was apparently said at that time to be running with a 9 hour delay and would later be reported as cancelled. Initially we were told that the fog was to blame (and to be fair, everywhere was shrouded in the stuff); later we were also told that protestors to a new government policy have also been disrupting the trains by putting debris on the lines (an act that surely puts in to perspective the recent deeds of our own student protestors, young whipper snappers that they are).

This could turn in to a much longer ramble recounting our chasing around to find alternative transport to Jaisalmer – but I will cut to the outcome. We eventually ended up in the office of a Chap from the IRDC (can’t remember the full version but suffice to say it starts with ‘Indian Railway....something, something’). He came across as an efficient and effective gent in a rather nice if somewhat sweaty grey leather coat. In the hours to come we would as a group go on to ponder whether he was a Gentleman and a Scholar (a jolly decent chap) or actually whether he was a Charlatan and a Scoundrel (not such a decent fellow). As per the title of this tale, the solution to our travel problems was found at the bottom of our wallets.....and thus it was that The Man in The Grey Coat acquired us a nice car (come people carrier) along with a driver willing to take us the 16 hour drive to our required destination.

With our backpacks strapped to the roof, thus we were set to head off. Chrissie asked our driver his name; he said it was long and complicated – he suggested we called him ‘Dave’, to which we agreed.

In to the darkness and the fog we headed. Dave seemed a nice enough chap. Collectively we hoped that he was not in-fact a serial loon armed with a machete and a group of angry mugging mates waiting for us just around the corner....I am writing this entry whilst in the back of Dave’s car – studiously trying to ignore Dave’s passion for playing ‘Full Beam Chicken’ with oncoming traffic ....so tune in next time to find out our fate......

Love,

Si

The Off!

Righto Chaps!

 Christmas Dinner has been digested....and thus it is off to India that we head....packed far too much stuff....and I am not sure Sarah can lift her bag - she had to make some tough choices as to what to leave behind...

Heathrow beckons - then Delhi - a few hours there before getting an 18 hour train journey....let the adventure begin!

We will be trying to blog regularly and will be adding photos - so check in and laugh at our plight

 

Chinchin

Si